Baby off The Cliff

Case I:

A newborn baby was found dead in a nearby community forest by women gone to collect fodder for cattle in a rural area of Solukhumbu district in the country. On police interrogation, the baby was found thrown by a 19 year old unmarried girl of the same locale. It was also found that the child was born out of immoral sexual relation. The mother was sent to the custody for further investigation and the baby's body was sent for postmortem.

Case II:

A newborn was found lying at the bottom of cliff with intact placenta and cord, smothered with blood and dirt all over but still alive and breathing. Thanks to god, he was timely noticed by the passerby and was rescued by local women activists and taken safely to the hospital. On suspicion, the police looked into the nearby slum area where inside a locked house, and found a recent postpartum young girl who had just abandoned her child to die by him.

These are just the representative cases of how the women mercilessly leave their child. Many more are hidden or yet to be explored. The question arises, why did the young mothers abandon their babies? Why did they kill those innocent ones who even didn't have the chance to step into the world? Even animals don't abandon their young ones. Why those young ones did chose their fates like that? Being asphyxiated by their own mothers, or having to be thrown off some cliffs, or thrown in forest left to be killed by wild hounds, or under bridge, or a deserted alley, or on hospital dust-bins.

Many a cases have the similar story underneath, unmarried mother or a product of illegitimate immoral relations and fear of family, or rape and incest. Out of many reasons, fear of society and families is the promising one. Babies out of wedlock or single motherhood as a result of premarital relation are socially unacceptable. The girls fear of stigma they get after being a single mother. To hide the reality and prevent stigma to individual and whole family, they abandon their child.

Another influencing reason is the inadequate Sexual and Reproductive rights (SRHR) among women in any community (rural or urban). The situation of availability and accessibility of SRHR in Nepal is low and most women are deprived of those rights. In Nepal, contraceptive use among married couple is low (60% urban and 48% rural) due to cultural barriers and inadequate knowledge on SRHR. This figure among unmarried couple is much less. Consequently, those unmarried women are vulnerable to SRHR as unwanted premarital pregnancy and infanticides. If the above mentioned women had access to use contraceptives or had some support groups, they would not have compulsion to kill babies. This would give support to making premarital relations but this would do less harm than seizing the right of newborn to live.

The women might have limited sexual knowledge, might have assumed the partner would take responsibility, hoped the pregnancy would lead to marriage, or not considered the possibility of becoming pregnant. If only they had access to abortion, which is legalized in Nepal since 2002, the situation would not be this dangerous. The reasons the women did not try to terminate the pregnancy might be delay in realizing the pregnancy or hoping the birth of the child would bring the partner back.

Whatever the reasons for abandonment and infanticide, it really feels bitter to read these stories. A mother would never want to abandon her baby until and unless it threatens her life and livelihood. This heart breaking situation has to be ended, no matter how and when, but at any cost. The women should be able to take care of their newborn and the babies should have the right to stay by their mother and grow to enjoy the world.